Spooky things are happening outside of Paris.
About 30 minutes outside, to be precise. Goussainville, a once thriving village just outside of the French capital, is now a ghost town. Thanks to the building of Europe’s largest airport in the 1970s, Goussainville ended up right in the flight stream of dozens of airplanes at all hours of the day and night. The villagers departed en masse in the wake of the arrival of Charles de Gaulle, leaving the place eerily silent except for the deafening roar of turbo engines. In this episode of “A Guide to Unknown Paris,” MessyNessyChic goes to Goussainville to give a tour of one of her favorite French haunts (excuse the pun).
In this fresh new web series, Nessy’s brand can be summed up in two phrases. One, the subtitle of her website, is the “cabinet of curiosities.” It’s those little odds and ends you find when you go deep into the bottom of the one euro box at your local fripperie, the stuff that, with a little polishing, becomes pure gold. The other phrase is stamped right on the cover of her book: “Don’t be a Tourist.” Nessy abides by these two rules with a certainty that makes her videos charming, whimsical, and ultimately satisfying. After all, how many times can you see the Notre Dame before you think, “there has to be more to Paris”?
